Making Computers Actually Useful for Historical Linguists

Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.

SOAS Linguistics Webinars
16 December 2020

Xun GONG 龚勋
Postdoctoral Fellow, SOAS University of London

Abstract: Classical comparative and historical linguistics has a number of computational approaches, which, despite their sophistication, are rarely used by historical linguists in their day-to-day work. CAPR, a newly developed computer-assisted workflow, address the challenge. It supports historical linguists throughout the entire process of linguistic reconstruction, from lexica of daughter languages to an etymological dictionary. Through careful workflow design and innovative user interfaces powered by finite-state transducers, CAPR makes the investigation of language groups without a well-established comparative tradition to linguistic reconstruction incremental, almost gamified. Complex hypotheses can be built up in manageable steps, each supported by optimal information presentation and rapid feedback.